persevere

To be persistent and overcome a set of obstacles. Obstacles could include physical barriers ("He persevered through his pain, and finished the race."), criticism ("Despite the taunts that he could never finish school because he wasn't smart enough, he worked hard and persevered, and graduated with honors."), or discouragement ("Although his first attempt at the project was a failure, he persevered until he found a better solution.")

Notable Quotable

Startups in 13 Sentences (#13)

"Deals fall through. One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to."